Dark Casting

Evening loyal readers. I've been experimenting with casting parts for models. I got a bit of an itch in me and decided to try my hand at it.

The hard part was finding a local place to get the supplies I need. Thanks, to one of my dark allies, I was made aware of TAP Plastics. This place not only carries what you will need for most resin casting, but also has many other items that can be used for scratch building models.

I ran into a bit of a problem deciding what to make a mold of for my first casting. Fortunately, there was yet another ally who required duplicate parts for scratch built half-tracks.

At this point, I must apologize to my sweet, evil readers, I have no pictures to show you. I assure you, there is not much excitement to be had by viewing photographs of resin curing.

Back to the parts for the half-track. After making a couple drop-cast molds, I came up with something that worked well for casting tires, slash, wheels. (Hubs for the tracks proved to be much simpler.) The silicone molds are working well and I have done a few castings so far. I have noticed that there is a little tearing in one of the molds. No big deal. I think I can get at least two more castings, if not a half-dozen, before it degrades too far.

I do need to consult a stripe-haired, wizard of evil to see what materials he uses for maximum performance, but I am having fun experimenting and gathering my own data.

Coming soon, two part molds. I will do my best to get pictures for you.

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Bringer of Eternal Night, Part Three

Welcome to part three of our series. Today we will observe the noble Nightbringer as it enters adolescence. As you can see it's bright plumage has molted and we now see it's darker, more sinister appearance that will be finalized when it becomes an adult Nightbringer.

I'm really happy with how the Leviathan Purple wash worked with the toned down Escorpena Green to produce an undead like flesh tone.

The wings too, turned out well. I painted them a dark grey, with a light grey dry brush. After going over them with a Badab Black wash, I achieved the desired black, and maintained the detail.

There is still some touching up and final detail work to be done, but I am very happy with how it has come so far.

Thank you for joining us. Stay tuned for the finale, Bringer of Eternal Night, Part Four - The Night Has Come.

Bringer of Eternal Night, Part Two

Hello, my Axis of Darkness, gather around the screen. I have been negligent in posting pictures of my most nefarious deeds...

I have no apologies for you.

As you can see, dear readers, my Nightbringer is coming along nicely.


"The colours are bright and hurtful," you say? Fear not, for there is still work to be done. All will be remedied in the end.

Continue with whatever menial task you were toiling away at.

End transmission

I Must Be Mad. Mad, I Tell You.

There are some character building applications out there for Dungeon and Dragons 3.5. Two are really good and were licensed by Wizards of the Coast... But, the license expired and was not renewed. My current character class, Duskblade, was in a book published after the license expired. This means that there are no source files for the information contained in Player Handbook Two (3.5e).

Fortunately, PCGen allows the user to create custom source files, which yours truly has taken on the task. Unfortunately, the documentation is poorly organized, and vague. Despite that, I have made great headway and expect to have the Duskblade class available for use in the character generator soon. It has been a frustrating ride. There are still a few glitches to work out.

Bringer of Eternal Night

A few weeks back I was a Guardian Games, looking through the used miniatures. I found several Necrons to help fill out my army, at a price that allowed me to keep my food hole filled. Amongst the miniatures, I found an unfinished, poorly painted Nightbringer.

After a soak in some Simple Green and some vigorous scrubbing, I was ready to make him whole again...

But he needed something to make him stand out, something to make him special. After seeing the sprues for some Blood Angel miniatures that a friend had just purchased, I decided that he needed wings. The same friend suggested Bretonnian Pegasus wings. After looking around, I determined that those were the best bet, so I ordered some.

The wings were a little bigger than I expected and required some trimming to get them to attach in a way that did not look foolish. I am very happy with the results.

The model had some elements on the back that were covered by the wings. The cloth that was draped over his body, crossed in the back. So, I had an opportunity to try my hand at using green stuff for the first time. After much working, and cleaning up of thumbprints, I managed to get a passable representation of the cloth.

Color Scheme

Here is the first Necron Warrior to come close to completion. I'm using a silver dry-brush. The orange shoulder seems to go well with the red rods, but new ideas are forming. More on this later.

First Post / My Monolith

First Post! So, I have finally given into pressure and started my blog. Over next few days (weeks) I will be posting information about projects that have already been started. I will start with my idea for a scratch built Necron Monolith.

Here is a picture of my the modified concept. The original concept had the disc level, with the portal either on top or suspended below.

The disc will be pitched approximately 25 degrees from horizontal. This will allow a larger diameter pipe to fit onto a disc with a height profile of one inch.

The pipe I first purchased turned out to be of too narrow a diameter to achieve the visual effect I wanted. I was getting ready to head to the hardware store to get some PVC pipe, when I discovered the perfect replacement. I used a shampoo bottle to create the portal. This saved me money and a trip to the store. The bottle proved to be easier to work with than the PVC would have. Still, it took quite a bit of work cutting the bottle to fit to the disc.


I came up with a better way to represent the power matrix. More on that later. Still working out exactly how to represent the gauss flux arc weapons.